Posted tagged ‘Attack at British Parliament’

“I absolutely agree, and it is wrong to describe this as ‘Islamic terrorism’,” she [Prime Minister Theresa May] replied. “It is ‘Islamist terrorism.'”

Clever of her. She did not dismiss the attack as “violent extremism.” She did not suggest that the attacker might just as easily have been a Rastafarian, Zoroastrian or Buddhist. She tacitly recognized that ideologies based on Islamic scripture drive such terrorist attacks while avoiding the implication that most Muslims approve of such ideologies.

This nuanced explanation should have become the norm long ago. Instead, many on the left insist that Islam is simply and only a “religion of peace.” Muslims who contradict that are “perverting” Islam. Non-Muslims who contradict that are Islamophobes.

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“The kafir’s blood is halal for you, so shed it.” That’s just one of the catchier headlines in a recent issue of Rumiyah, a slick online magazine published by the Islamic State group.

A “kafir,” of course, is a non-Muslim. “Halal” means religiously permissible. As for Rumiyah, that’s Arabic for Rome, one of the Christian capitals that the leaders of Islamic State hope to conquer. (The other great Christian capital, Constantinople, fell to soldiers of the caliphate in 1453. It’s now called Istanbul.)

Was Khalid Masood — the convert to Islam who last week staged a terrorist attack at London’s Houses of Parliament, seat and symbol of British democracy — a reader of Rumiyah? If so, he might have been inspired by an article late last year urging people like him to do precisely what he did: drive a vehicle into a crowd of non-Muslims, “smashing their bodies with the vehicle’s strong outer frame while advancing forward — crushing their heads, torsos, and limbs under the vehicle’s wheels and chassis.” Masood then exited the vehicle and stabbed a police officer — a tactic used frequently against Israelis in recent years.

The Western response to such atrocities has become ritualistic. The police say they are investigating and are uncertain about the perpetrator’s motive. Foreign heads of state condemn the attack, offer condolences and pledge solidarity. Leaders of the nation attacked defiantly announce that life will go on and no one will be intimidated.

Next, comes the debate over whether Islam should be implicated or vindicated. In this instance, a conservative MP, Michael Tomlinson, asked Prime Minister Theresa May whether she agreed that the term “Islamic terror” was inappropriate.

“I absolutely agree, and it is wrong to describe this as ‘Islamic terrorism’,” she replied. “It is ‘Islamist terrorism.'”

Clever of her. She did not dismiss the attack as “violent extremism.” She did not suggest that the attacker might just as easily have been a Rastafarian, Zoroastrian or Buddhist. She tacitly recognized that ideologies based on Islamic scripture drive such terrorist attacks while avoiding the implication that most Muslims approve of such ideologies.

This nuanced explanation should have become the norm long ago. Instead, many on the left insist that Islam is simply and only a “religion of peace.” Muslims who contradict that are “perverting” Islam. Non-Muslims who contradict that are Islamophobes.

Meanwhile, many on the right believe it is only the Islamists who are practicing “true” Islam. They implicitly concur with the Islamists that 21st century Sufis, Ismailis and Ahmadis are heretics, as are Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi (both have gone to war against Islamists) and the millions of Kurds who reject Islamism because they recognize the existential threat it poses to their proud nation.

Islamism is not a complicated ideology. Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, wrote: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” Among the mottoes of the Muslim Brotherhood: “Jihad is our way; death for the sake of Allah is our wish.”

Some Islamists believe the path to power can be cleared only with the sword. We may call them jihadists. Some Islamists see other routes, for example through the ballot box or demographic change. Some Islamists even claim to eschew violence. But to infer from that they embrace nonviolence as a principle would be a mistake.

All Islamists, even those who are clean-shaven and wear neckties, are committed to the supremacy of their religion and their community, the umma, the “nation of Islam,” over all other religions, communities and nations.

No one would argue that when we condemn “white supremacism” we risk offending all people of pallor. So why is it “politically incorrect” to speak candidly — and condemn unequivocally — Islamic supremacism?

Another fact often avoided: Islamists can be Shia as well as Sunni. The earliest Islamist attacks against Americans (the Barbary pirates notwithstanding) were carried out in 1983 in Beirut, first against the U.S. Embassy, then against the barracks of the U.S. Marines who were there to serve as peacekeepers. Most analysts agree that Hezbollah, a Shia organization funded and instructed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, was responsible.

Neither Hezbollah nor Iran’s rulers have become more moderate over the decades since. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sees himself as leading a global jihadist revolution against the United States and the liberal world order. The significance of this appears to have eluded many policymakers.

How, for example, did President Barack Obama not understand that the deal he cut with Iran’s rulers will establish them as legitimate members of the nuclear weapons club within less than a generation — even if “Death to America!” remains their goal and rallying cry? And does U.S. President Donald Trump grasp that if the defeat of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq further empowers Tehran, the American victory will be Pyrrhic?

Sunni and Shia Islamists are rivals — not enemies. Neither would take issue with the unnamed author of the Rumiyah article noted above who asserts that “striking terror into the hearts of all disbelievers is a Muslim’s duty.”

Whether that view is based on true Islam or a perversion of Islam really doesn’t matter. Either way, it’s an expression of the most dynamic and lethal ideologies now spreading around the world. We need to more seriously study these ideologies. We need to more candidly discuss what Islamists intend to do to those who refuse to embrace or appease them. Only then can we hope to formulate a coherent and effective strategy to defend ourselves.

Thanks to the Canadian Parliament and their lack of curiosity about a deeply opaque but ambitious word (“Islamophobia”), the Canadian press and public will have to stop certain inquiries into the truth about the events of our time. Who — apart from the good legislators of Canada — could possibly believe that the world will benefit from such censoring? And at such a time as this? To adopt a well-known expression: those whom the gods would destroy they first make ignorant.

Would we be allowed to ask who ISIS are inspired by?

Would they be allowed to say that the perpetrator was a Muslim?

Would they be allowed to say that there is a tradition of violence within the Islamic religion which has sadly permitted just such actions for a rather long time. Or would they have to lie?

The Canadian government suffers from many things. Among them is bad timing.

On Thursday of last week, the Canadian Parliament voted through a blasphemy law specifically designed to protect Islam. As Al-Jazeera was happy to report on Friday, the previous day’s vote condemned “Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.” The non-binding motion that the Parliament passed also requested that a Parliamentary committee should launch a study to look at how to “develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination, including Islamophobia”. The motion passed by 201 votes to 91.

It is just as well for those 201 Canadian legislators that they were debating all this in their distinguished national Parliament rather than the mother of all Parliaments. For had these legislators been in the House of Commons in Westminster, their thoughts may have taken on a sharper focus.

For one day earlier, the British House of Commons lived through an example of rampant Islamism rather than “Islamophobia”. And although nobody in Westminster decided to turn into a crazy Muslim-hating bigot, they did manage to see what a hateful Muslim bigot could do when armed with the simple weapons of a knife and a motor vehicle.

The Canadian Liberal MP Iqra Khalid, who introduced the motion in Canada, proclaimed that the introduction of a de facto Islamic blasphemy law in Canada was needed because “We need to continue to build those bridges among Canadians, and this is just one way that we can do this.” Hours before she said that, one of Khalid’s co-religionists was using a bridge built more than a hundred and fifty years earlier for a very different purpose.

Khalid Masood of Birmingham chose to use an older bridge to drive at high speed into crowds of Londoners and tourists. On his rampage, he managed to injure people from 11 countries. He succeeded in killing Kurt Cochran, an American on holiday in London with his wife to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. He also killed Aysha Frade, a British national of Spanish and Cypriot descent who had been walking across Westminster Bridge to pick up her two young daughters from school. He also killed Leslie Rhodes, a 75-year old retired window-cleaner, described by a neighbour, who sat at his bedside in hospital as he died, as “the nicest man you ever met.”

After this carnage, so similar to the vehicle attacks in recent years in Germany, Israel and France, the 52-year old Khalid Masood ran at the Houses of Parliament and stabbed to death Police Constable Keith Palmer, 48. As all this unfolded, the Houses of Parliament in Westminster were put into lockdown. As with the Islamist attack on the Parliament building at Ottawa in 2014, the assailant got disturbingly close to the very centre of power in the land before being shot dead.

After deliberately driving a car into crowds of people in London last week, Khalid Masood crashed the vehicle into the fence surrounding Parliament, and stabbed a police officer to death. (Image source: Sky News video screenshot)

So, we come to the central problem of what the Canadian Parliament did at the same time that the British Parliament was being assaulted. What are we allowed to say about this? Or at least what would we be allowed to say in Canada?

So far, we know that the perpetrator of the London attack was a 52-year old convert to Islam who appeared to have been influenced by Wahhabism, but whose particular aims or intentions remain, for the time-being, unknown. Unlike the murderers of British soldier Lee Rigby in 2013 (one of whom carried on his person a note to his children with numerous Quranic references explaining why he was doing what he was doing, and why it was right) Khalid Masood appears to have left no note. Nor has any suicide-video yet emerged.

But it is not unreasonable to speculate that he was motivated or inspired by ISIS. The group has claimed his attack for their side of the terror ledger and the style of the attack certainly conforms to the type called for by the group. But beyond this, what are we allowed to say? Or what would we be allowed to say in Canada?

Would we be allowed to ask who ISIS are inspired by? The question must linger. It must be hovering over the mind of many a Canadian journalist as they ponder the terrorist attacks that have previously taken place in their country and wonder how they would go about reporting an attack such as that in Westminster last week.

Would they be allowed to say that the perpetrator was a Muslim? Would they be allowed to say that he was a convert? Would they be allowed to mention the Wahhabi point? Or would this tread into the realm of the “Islamophobia”. Let us assume that they would be allowed to mention these things in print. Would they be allowed to go any farther? Would they be allowed to ponder in opinion columns or quote people in reportage who said that Masood and indeed ISIS had not got their ideas from nowhere? Would they be allowed to say that there is a tradition of violence within the Islamic religion, which has sadly permitted just such actions for a rather long time. Or would they have to lie?

History suggests that when the law makes it illegal to tell the truth, a reliable portion of people can be called upon to lie. So it has been in the past. And so it will be with Canada. So it would be anywhere once the law became an opponent of truth rather than the protector of it.

Thanks to the Canadian Parliament and their lack of curiosity about a deeply opaque but ambitious word (“Islamophobia”), the Canadian press and public will have to stop certain inquiries into the truth about the events of our time. Who — apart from the good legislators of Canada — could possibly believe that the world will benefit from such censoring? And at such a time as this? To adopt a well-known expression: those whom the gods would destroy they first make ignorant.

Hundal called on Londoners to learn from the spirit of the Battle of Britain: “Keep Calm and Carry on.” But there’s a big difference between now and then. During World War II, Brits named their enemy. Everyone openly recognized Nazism as a monstrous ideology. And the media didn’t respond to German bombings in the East End by slandering Churchill as a “Naziphobe.”

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After last Wednesday’s deadly attack outside London’s Houses of Parliament, the left-wing British media expressed outrage – not at the appalling way in which Islam and Islamic terrorism have transformed life and sown death throughout the Western world, but at the purported moral depravity of those who dare to connect the dots.

In the Guardian, Jon Henley and Amber Jamiesen sneered at Marine Le Pen for “linking the London attack to migrant policy, despite the attacker being British.” (My emphasis.) They smeared as “xenophobic” Nigel Farage’s argument “that the London attacks proved Donald Trump’s hardline immigration and anti-Muslim policies were correct.” The Independent‘s Maya Oppenheimer censured Farage’s comments, too, countering his critique of multiculturalism by saying he’d “failed to mention the fact many of the victims of the attack were in fact foreigners themselves.” (My emphasis again.) Needless to say, the issue wasn’t Britishness vs. foreignness; it was Islam. But to say so was verboten. As Theresa May said (in what already seems destined to become an immortal statement), “Islamist terror” has nothing do with Islam.

Islam is a religion of hate. But when that hate manifests itself in jihadist terror, the proper leftist move is to turn away from the reality of that hate – which last Wednesday sent several innocent people to a hospital or a morgue – to the purported “hate” of decent, law-abiding individuals who have had quite enough of murderous jihadist hate. Instead of acknowledging that a large minority (if not an outright majority) of British Muslims support sharia law in the U.K. (and that more than a few privately applaud terrorism), you’re supposed to invoke the fantasy of a Britain in which all citizens, infidel and Muslim, share the same values and live together in harmony – except, of course, for the horrid Islamophobes, who, simply by mentioning the Islamic roots of Islamic terror, are exploiting terrorism, dishonoring its victims, and subverting social harmony.

And so we had the Guardian editorial on the terrorist attack, which cast the reality-deniers as good guys who believe in “standing together” and the truth-tellers as voices of “cynicism.” While praising MPs for their readiness “to emphasise the need for solidarity,” the editorial deplored Farage and UKIP leader Paul Nuttall, who “renewed their baseless and disgraceful campaign to drive a wedge between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain.” The paper’s Nesrine Malik agreed. When she first heard of the attack, she wrote, a “familiar knot” appeared in her stomach. Why? Because of the horror of mass slaughter? Because, yet again, innocent people had lost their lives to jihad? No. Because she realized that she’d once again have to brace herself “for a predictable battle to separate fact from hysteria, plead for a sense of proportionality and entreat the hurt and the angry not to generalise.” For Malik, as for her paper’s editors, the real bad guys aren’t the terrorists: they’re people like Tommy Robinson (who “was at the scene stirring hate while the shock was fresh”) and Nigel Farage (who was “spewing predictable bile”).

The “right wing,” charged Malik, had plainly been “waiting in the wings, almost grateful that the imaginary fears it had been trying to provoke had become real ones.” (My emphasis yet again.) Now try to make sense of that: Robinson and Farage are selling “imaginary fears,” but on Wednesday those “imaginary fears” became “real ones.” Never mind that the “fears,” far from being products of anyone’s imagination, are based on a very real experience of terrorist acts in which thousands of very real people have died. “There was no respect for the dead, dying and grieving, there was just an opportunity,” wrote Malik. On the contrary: it’s Malik and her ilk who show less for the dead victims of Islamic terrorism than for the reputation of Islam. For Malik, Robinson and Farage are part of a “hate industry” that, she maintained, has grown with each of “the three Islamic terror attacks in London since 2005.” You’d think the fact that London had been subject to three Islamic terror attacks since 2005 would make it clear what the real “hate industry” is.

The same kind of thinking was on display at the Independent, where an outraged Holly Baxter denounced Robinson for saying that Muslims “are waging war on us,” that they’ve been doing so “for 1,400 years,” and that “Muslims make up only 4 per cent of the UK population, look at the continued chaos and destruction they cause, what do you think it will be like with 20 per cent?” For Baxter, Robinson’s statement was a disgusting display of hate, and proved that “London needs a Muslim mayor now more than ever” – for at a time when ISIS is pushing the idea of a war between Islam and the West, “[t]he existence of a Muslim mayor of London symbolically destroys that narrative from the outset.” No, the existence of a Muslim mayor of London – one who has defended terrorists, shared platforms with radical imams, blamed terrorism on the West, and sought to punish anti-Islam speech – shows just how successful Islam has been in that war.

Critics of Islam, complained Baxter, are “racists” who should “at least have the common decency to admit it’s all a far-right careerist exercise rather than anything to do with ‘protecting the innocent.’” Sunny Hundal made the same argument in another piece for the Independent: “No wonder the far-right was so quick to capitalise on the Westminster terror attack – it relies on atrocities for support.” That “far-right,” he seethed, was like a pack of “jackals circling their prey.” Get that? In this picture, the jackal isn’t the terrorist – it’s the critics of his guiding ideology. Maintaining that Islam’s critics “hate the very idea of cosmopolitan communities” (no, they hate barbarism), Hundal called on Londoners to learn from the spirit of the Battle of Britain: “Keep Calm and Carry on.” But there’s a big difference between now and then. During World War II, Brits named their enemy. Everyone openly recognized Nazism as a monstrous ideology. And the media didn’t respond to German bombings in the East End by slandering Churchill as a “Naziphobe.”

There is diversity in Islam, including millions of Muslims who adhere only to its spiritual elements or see themselves as more culturally than doctrinally Islamic. But when we speak of Islam, as opposed to Muslims, we are not speaking about a mere religious belief system. We are talking about a competing civilization — that is very much how Islam self-identifies. It has its own history, principles, values, mores, and legal system. Islam, thus understood, is not non-Western. It is anti-Western.

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England has been shaken by the terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge and Parliament that was carried out last Wednesday by Khalid Masood, whose real name was Adrian Elms or Adrian Ajao. As more information has come out about the terrorist, a number of observations can be made.

1) Masood/Elms/Ajao was an unusual terrorist in some ways, and typical in others. Like nearly all Islamic terrorists, he had a middle-class upbringing and at one point lived in a million dollar house in East Sussex. Drugs apparently precipitated his descent, and he had a criminal history that landed him in prison. Masood was not religious until his incarceration–his parents are Christians–but, like many others, he converted to Islam while in prison. After his release, he persuaded one of his daughters to adopt Islam, change her name and wear a hijab. At 52, he was quite a bit older than most terrorists.

2) Masood used the current weapons of choice, an automobile and two knives. Westminster Bridge is generally crowded with pedestrians, and he simply drove his car into a crowd of them, killing five and injuring as many as 50, some critically. This type of attack is very hard to stop–for practical purposes, impossible.

Following the attack, giant yellow bollards were placed in the area around Buckingham Palace to prevent attackers from driving vehicles into the crowds that always congregate there:

I don’t blame the Brits for doing this; the area around the White House is blocked off in a similar way, if I am not mistaken. But obviously, protecting a few high-profile areas does nothing to stop an Islamic terrorist (or anyone else) from driving a vehicle into a crowd anywhere, in any city.

When mass murders occur, liberals tend to focus on the weapons used by the murderer. Terrorist attacks carried out with cars and knives illustrate the futility of this approach. The only solution–if there is one–is to identify and stop the terrorist before he acts. Also, to take any feasible steps that will reduce the number of potential terrorists in the population.

At some point he was investigated by MI5 over links to violent extremism but was considered too minor to monitor, and did not feature on a 3,000-strong list of suspects feared to be capable of mounting an attack.

Not surprisingly, it is very difficult to predict which radical Muslims will actually launch attacks.

4) Masood reportedly spent several years in Saudi Arabia, where he was immersed in Wahabbism. That is a pretty good predictor of radical belief and behavior.

5) One of those murdered by Masood was a policeman named Keith Palmer, whom Masood stabbed to death after crashing through a gate to the Parliament building. Palmer likely would have been even more of a hero if he hadn’t been unarmed. Disarming one’s own police force is insane.

6) Here in the U.S., there has been much talk of “vetting.” While checking out visitors and, especially, immigrants to the U.S. is certainly appropriate, to the limited extent it is possible, vetting is wholly inadequate as a security measure. Many terrorists are second generation immigrants, and others, like Masood, are Islamic converts.

7) The problem is Islam. Not all or even most Muslims, of course, but rather Islam as a political ideology. Andy McCarthy makes the point well at National Review. You should read the whole thing, which is a good primer on the subject. Here are some excerpts:

There is diversity in Islam, including millions of Muslims who adhere only to its spiritual elements or see themselves as more culturally than doctrinally Islamic. But when we speak of Islam, as opposed to Muslims, we are not speaking about a mere religious belief system. We are talking about a competing civilization — that is very much how Islam self-identifies. It has its own history, principles, values, mores, and legal system. Islam, thus understood, is not non-Western. It is anti-Western.

Like the conversion of Masood, the conversion of Birmingham has been a function of this defining Islamic attribute. Individual Muslims may assimilate, but Islam doesn’t do assimilation. Islam does not melt into your melting pot. Islam, as Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna proclaimed, is content with nothing less than political, cultural, and civilizational dominance.

As Soeren Kern relates in a comprehensive Gatestone Institute report on Islam in Britain, the metamorphosis of Birmingham, along with several other U.K. population centers, signifies this resistance. When the Islamic presence in a Western community reaches a critical mass, Islam’s hostility to Western mores and demands for sharia governance result in non-Muslim flight. Marriages between Muslims resident in the Western community and Muslims overseas tend to result in childbirth rates and household growth that dwarfs that of the indigenous population. Arranged, intra-familial, and polygamous marriages, endorsed by Islamic mores, drastically alter the fabric of communities in short order. Birmingham, in particular, has been ground zero of “Operation Trojan Horse,” a sharia-supremacist scheme to Islamize the public schools.
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[T]he remorseless fact is that before ISIS and al-Qaeda and the Khomeini revolution and Hezbollah and the Blind Sheikh and the Brotherhood and Khalid Masood, there was the single thing that unites them all. There was Islam.

Western political and opinion elites remain willfully blind to this. They cannot help but project onto Islamic beliefs and practices their own progressive pieties — which take seriously neither religion nor the notion that there is any civilization but their own.

America is committed to the assumption that Islam, in all of its varieties and manifestations, is merely a religion. This entitles Islam not only to the full protection of the First Amendment, but also to the presumption that it is a benign if obsolete force, like other religions. Which explains why journalists puzzle over what could possibly have motivated the terrorist who shouts “Allahu akbar” to kill infidels.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t know he was going to get so lucky on Wednesday when a threat he issued instantly materialized.

Indeed, the Islamist leader of the formerly modernizing democracy was probably happily amazed at the news of the terrorist attack in London, as it came on the heels of a speech he delivered in Ankara, in which he warned that in “no part of the world, no European, no Westerner, will be able to take steps on the street safely and peacefully.” This fate would befall them, he said, if they “continue to behave like this.”

Of course, Erdogan was not personally responsible for the rampage of U.K.-born Khalid Masood, who managed to murder four people before being killed by police. Nor had he specified what he meant by claiming the West would not be safe.

He did, however, caution that Turkey is “not a country to push, to prod, to play with its honor, to shove its ministers out of the door, drag its citizens on the floor.”

He had a point: Only Erdogan and his goons are at liberty to drag Turkish citizens on the floor.

This was not the point he was trying to make, however. Erdogan denies that he imprisons anyone he considers critical of his regime. But he has to do that when he spends so much time accusing Europe of human-rights abuses.

Meanwhile, the only “human rights” Erdogan really cares about are his own. More precisely, what he most hungers for is power, which he has been ruthless at procuring and making sure not to lose, by any authoritarian means. The failed attempt to oust him last July made this all the more clear, when he took the opportunity of the thwarted coup to crack down on every sector of society, locking up journalists, judges, police and members of the military on bogus grounds.

This is also why he is so intent on winning the April 16 constitutional referendum, which if passed will see Turkey shift from a parliamentary to a presidential political system. Erdogan and others who support the move claim it will make governance more efficient. But the wannabe dictator’s real reason is singular: to enhance and secure his growing reign of terror.

With polls indicating that the Turkish public is split down the middle on this issue, Erdogan took his campaign to the EU, where Germany and the Netherlands in particular are home to many expatriate Turks. Facing reservations from both — though Germany said it would give permission if he made the process more transparent and put a stop to his aggressive and inappropriate rhetoric — Erdogan doubled down, calling them Nazis and fascists.

“They have nothing to do with the civilized world,” he said in a televised address earlier this month. “The EU is fast going toward drowning in its own fears.”

If this assertion has any merit, it is precisely because of rulers and proxies with Erdogan’s ideology. Though he touts his role in the war against Islamic State to show his enlightenment, he is attempting to bring his country into the same dark ages that the Sunni murderers occupy. In other words, Erdogan, who has close ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, has shown time and again that it is only certain terrorists he wants eradicated; the others, his allies, spill the blood of infidels.

Wednesday’s attack at Westminster — whose perpetrator Islamic State claimed as a “soldier” in its call to ill Britons — may not have been inspired by Erdogan’s friends. But Masood’s knife-wielding, car-ramming actions expressed the same antipathy towards Judeo-Christian societal values that all Islamists harbor.

Erdogan ought to know, which is precisely why Europe must take his admonitions seriously and pray he loses next month’s referendum.